the blog of LAKE, the Lowndes Area Knowledge Exchange

Citizen dialog for transparent process

Monday, 05 November 2012

Nuclear reactors near here

If you think of nuclear reactors as something far away,
or as much safer than Fukushima,
you're in for a surprise.
The most notorious reactors are the ones not yet built,
units 3 and 4 at Plant Vogtle near Augusta and their
famous financial boondoggle.
But others are closer, older, and more numerous than you may know.

Here's a map by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC).

That map's not clickable, so here's a table,
selected from an
NRC table
by distance from Valdosta:

Although the current 40-year licenses expire in 2014 and 2018, the
NRC last month began holding hearings on the company's request to
extend the license another 20 years.

According to the NRC map, at least
ten other reactors within 500 miles of here are 30-39 years old.

Within 500 miles of Valdosta, there are 32 operating nuclear power reactors.
That's approximate land miles.
What really matters is air miles, since that's the way the wind blows.
Radioactivity from Chernobyl was first detected near Stockholm,
about a thousand miles away.

Turkey Point near Miami, for example, is less than 500 miles from here.
You may recall those reactors as the ones
Ed Asner was talking about.